Making meaning

(see also semiotics, eco-semiotics and other keywords)

"all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs…along with their representational and inferential relations…without signs, man can neither perceive, feel, act or think.”

(Peirce, 1868)

Why is it in the glossary?

Some might say that we don't need more words, virtue signalling or nice pictures - we need action!
We know that we must soon transition from the current (extraction/disposal) paradigm, but how?
We are awash with scientific facts but have no affirmative vision of how we really want to live.
Unfortunately, as consumers and voters, our duty is limited to choosing, rather than dreaming.
This helps to explain why progress remains so slow. Small ('practical') steps will not be enough.
Big, radical ideas may have merit but are commonly dismissed as unrealistic (i.e. "Utopian").

New meanings create new opportunities

It is possible that affordable solutions are hiding in plain sight - maybe right under our noses.
Our monkey brains struggle to differentiate between the unthinkable and the impossible.
We tend to filter out anomalies that don't fit into existing systems of value and meaning.
By creating new meanings society has more chance to try out new beliefs and customs.
Perhaps artists will play an important role in helping the transition to a new paradigm.
They are licensed to create new meanings without having to justify or explain them.
This may be invaluable if they help us to uncover unforeseen opportunities for change.

Entangled in meaning

It is hard to understand meaning because it requires us to ask ourselves how we mean meaning.
How we define it depends partly on who we are, why we are asking, and the context in which we ask it.
It is common to describe the making of meaning using terms such as signs (see semiotics) as.

Seeing meanings as signs

The tendency to see all communication in terms of signs is an old one that probably needs re-thinking.
We expect scientists to identify abstract patterns & trends (e.g. semantics, logic, syntactics).
But if we endeavour to make new meanings, the idea that we are creating 'signs' may feel inappropriate.
Artists immersed in the processes of making meaning, will probably be immersed.
It makes more sense after the event than it does when we are fully '.
- For example, artists or designers might be intrigued by who creates meaning and where it resides:
- "Art is not about itself but the attention we bring to it." (Marcel Duchamp)
But this process may distance us from our personal, situated, self-reflexive role in the creation of meaning.
For example, the linguistics theorist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) saw only an arbitrary relationship between what we mean and with what means we try to communicate it. (Holdcraft, 1991).
He used the related concepts of signifiers (what we mean) and signs (whatever words, sounds, images, gestures we use to invoke them).

Signs of life

How is meaning applied within abstract theory (e.g. logic) compared with hands-on practice (e.g. medicine)?
Thinking about living systems is useful (practically) if it encourages us to be alert, flexible and resourceful.
It is interesting that the first use of the term signs is attributed to two 17th century physicians.
Henry Stubbes coined the term ‘semeiotics’ (from Greek words meaning ‘observant of signs’ and ‘a sign, a mark’ to describe how doctors read a patient’s symptoms (Stubbes, 1670).
John Locke (1602-1734): divides science into three categories -
- 1. the nature of things (Nature)
- 2. the moral nature of human action in pursuit of any end, especially happiness
- 3. how 1) and 2) are reconciled and made known
Locke called the third category the 'doctrine of signs' (semeiotike).
It is interesting that Locke's legacy includes a pragmatic sense of semiotics
- (i.e. "signs and how they work in the world'')
- Nor is there any thing to be relied upon in Physick, but an exact knowledge of medicinal physiology (founded on observation, not principles), semeiotics, method of curing, and tried (not excogitated, not commanding) medicines."

(Locke, 1823)

Signs of action

helped to establish the notion of

From this detached, scientific perspective, de Saussure found no essential correlation between

Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata, or meaning

Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures

Linguistics - Ferdinand de Saussure
Languaging - Maturana & Varela
Bio-semiotics / eco-semiotics - Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944)
Pragmatics: Relation between signs and the effects they have on the people who use them - Charles Peirce

Semiosis

It also

in the following terms:

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) later applied the word semiosis to any action that uses signs to create, or to interpret meaning.
A sign means anything (other than the sign itself) that communicates a meaning to the interpreter of the sign.
Slightly different theories of signs were developed by the linguist and logician, Ferdinand de Saussure .
However, although Peirce and de Saussure were interested in different aspects of communication, each understood that a sign could be almost anything.

In the nineteenth century, Charles Sanders Peirce defined what he termed "semiotic" (which he sometimes spelled as "semeiotic") as the "quasi-necessary, or formal doctrine of signs", which abstracts "what must be the characters of all signs used by...an intelligence capable of learning by experience",7 and which is philosophical logic pursued in terms of signs and sign processes.8 Charles Morris followed Peirce in using the term "semiotic" and in extending the discipline beyond human communication to animal learning and use of signals.

This seminar offers a working context that is intended to make design processes work better.

1. Brief history of semiotics -

Kena Upanishad
Part 3 - 1
"There are different names and forms which represent certain personal aspects of Divinity, such as Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Siva the Transformer; but no one of these can fully represent the Whole. Brahman is the vast ocean of being, on which rise numberless ripples and waves of manifestation. From the smallest atomic form to a Deva or an angel, all spring from that limitless ocean of Brahman, the inexhaustible Source of life. No manifested form of life can be independent of its source, just as no wave, however mighty, can be independent of the ocean. Nothing moves without that Power." In a sense, then

Difference between intrinsic nature of something and an attribute that we ascribe to it.

It is... possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of social psychology, and hence of general psychology. We shall call it semiology (from the Greek semeîon, 'sign'). It would investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them. Since it does not yet exist, one cannot say for certain that it will exist. But it has a right to exist, a place ready for it in advance. Linguistics is only one branch of this general science. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics, and linguistics will thus be assigned to a clearly defined place in the field of human knowledge.
—Cited in Chandler's "Semiotics For Beginners", Introduction.

2. Life is all we have
- communication design and the idea of metabolism
- Signs and Living Systems - What is survival? / autopoiesis / sympoiesis / structural coupling / parasitism / commensualism / mutualism / self-steering systems / 1st & 2nd Order systems / signs of identity (inside/outside)

PART 1. Languaging Survival - What is Languaging?

Cellular logic / solipsism / theories of difference / signs / codes / signifiers / indexical signing / ecological theories of perception / heuristics situated actions / performatives / private languages / ecological theories of aesthetics

Useful in understanding

It is often applied in the theorisation of communication.

Useful within the creative process

We can also use it as a playground for making the impossible thinkable.

Co-semiosis

We might, therefore, think of ‘signs’ as verbs that aid ‘co-semiosis’ within co-evolution, thus ensuring our collective survival.

Nonetheless, from the little I know about science, it chimes with David Bohm’s theory of ‘relevation’ that also works at the quantum level. Here, the ecological semiotic theories of biologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944) offer a useful starting point for researchers, as its phenomenological basis permits a holistic and self-reflexive basis from which to reflect upon the active, situated, embodied, and, therefore, partial nature of scientific discovery.

Semiosis (from the old Greek word for the 'marking', or signing process. , is any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste.

The term was introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) to describe a process that interprets signs as referring to their objects, as described in his theory of sign relations, or semiotics.

Overview
Peirce was interested primarily in logic, while Saussure was interested primarily in linguistics, which examines the functions and structures of language. However, both of them recognized that there is more to significant representation than language in the narrow sense of speech and writing alone. With this in mind, they developed the idea of semiosis to relate language to other sign systems both human and nonhuman. Today, there is disagreement as to the operating cause and effect.
One school of thought argues that language is the semiotic prototype and its study illuminates principles that can be applied to other sign systemscitation needed.
The opposing school argues that there is a metasign system and that language is simply one of many codes for communicating meaning, citing the way in which human infants learn about their environment before they have acquired verbal languagecitation needed. Whichever may be right, a preliminary definition of semiosis is any action or influence for communicating meaning by establishing relationships between signs which are to be interpreted by an audience.